Weight Loss & Obesity News & Features

The FDA asked the maker of weight-loss drug Belviq (lorcaserin) to take it off the market after a clinical trial showed an association with an increased risk of cancer.

Health care providers should weigh the benefits of taking lorcaserin against the potential risks when deciding whether to prescribe or continue patients on the medication, the FDA advised.

Looking at medical records from more than 33,000 U.S. patients, researchers found that those who underwent gastric bypass surgery had higher rates of hospitalization in the next five years, versus patients who underwent sleeve gastrectomy.

Ready-to-eat meals and snacks are making Americans obese and unhealthy, a new study suggests.

For years, research into "obesity genes" has  led many Americans to believe that their DNA makes becoming overweight and obese inevitable. But the new study shows that daily lifestyle -- not genes -- probably plays the much bigger role.

A decade from now, roughly half of U.S. adults will be obese -- with nearly one-quarter severely so, a new study projects.

The amount of carbon dioxide -- a greenhouse gas -- produced by a species is determined by its average metabolic rate, average body size and the total number of individuals of the species.

The proportion of people who've tried to lose weight during the previous year increased to 42% in 2015-2016, up from 34% in 1999-2000, according to federal survey data.

Although vegetarian eating does have a stellar health reputation, recent news has focused on what could be bad about vegetarian diets and more stringent vegan plans, including reports of hair loss and depression.

Weight-loss surgery should be more widely used to treat severely obese children and teens, a leading pediatricians' group says.

Those who gained weight as adults had a higher risk of premature death than those who maintained a normal weight. Weight loss in young to middle adulthood was not significantly related with death risk.

The risk of major birth defects was about 30% lower in children whose mothers had weight-loss surgery than in those of the obese mothers, the findings showed.

About 4.8 million American kids aged 10 to 17 -- just over 15% -- were obese in 2017-2018, according to a new report.

In 2018, the nine states with adult obesity rates above 35% were: Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and West Virginia.

The observational study tracked the health of almost 2,300 people with type 2 diabetes who had one of four types of weight-loss surgery. These included gastric bypass, sleeve gastrectomy, adjustable gastric banding and duodenal switch surgery.

His study found that a large waist size  -- about 35 inches or more -- significantly increased the risk of an early death for women over 49, even when they had a  normal BMI.

Over three months, volunteers who used a pasteurized version of the supplement lost an average of 5 pounds. Meanwhile, their cholesterol levels dipped and the progression of their "pre-diabetes" slowed.

Nearly 40% of U.S. adults are obese, putting them at a higher risk of earlier death, heart disease, stroke, some cancers, and gallbladder disease, among other problems.

"The science is actually pretty straightforward; we know that feeling stigmatized because of your weight actually leads to weight increases," said study author Inge Kersbergen.

Unlike standard weight-loss surgery, endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG) requires no incision and no hospital stay.

Earlier this year, another study -- pulling from the same data source -- found that middle-aged adults with abdominal obesity tended to have less gray matter volume than their normal-weight counterparts.

The impact of fat-shaming may be far-reaching because nearly three-quarters of Americans are overweight or obese, according to the latest information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If you track constantly, you can observe that you ate too much for lunch, for instance, and should lighten up for dinner.

In the study, the cancer incidence increases were particularly severe in six of the 12 obesity-related cancers: colon, uterine, gallbladder, kidney and pancreas, and multiple myeloma -- a bone marrow cancer.

As of 2016, the U.S. average weight for men was 198 pounds, while it was 170 pounds for women.